Congrats to Helena Costa, the new head coach of the French men’s professional soccer club Clermont Foot!

The Portuguese 36 year old, who most recently has been coaching Iran and Qatar’s national women’s teams, will be the first woman to coach a professional club in France, as well as the first to coach a top or second division team in any of Europe’s five major leagues. She’s only the second woman to manage a pro team in Europe period — Carolina Morace coached a third-division Italian team for two matches in 1999 before the “constant media pressure” became too much.

Despite the rise of women’s sports over the last few decades, coaching at all levels remains extremely male-dominated in the US as well. As ThinkProgess notes, “There has never been a female head coach in any major American pro sports league, and none in major college basketball or football either. Only about 3 percent of men’s sports teams at the college level have women coaches.” In fact, the proportion of women’s teams with female coaches is lower than ever. Ironically, while Title IX lead to incredible new opportunities for female athletes, it was not good for female coaches — in 1972, women coached more than 90 percent of women’s college teams; today that figure has dropped to 43 percent.

Good luck to Costa and Clermont next season, and may she be the first of many.

New Orleans, LA

Maya Dusenbery is an Executive Director in charge of Editorial at Feministing. Maya has previously worked at NARAL Pro-Choice New York and the National Institute for Reproductive Health and was a fellow at Mother Jones magazine. She graduated with a B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. A Minnesota native, she currently lives, writes, edits, and bakes bread in Atlanta, Georgia.

Maya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing in charge of Editorial.

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Yesterday, five stars of the United States women’s national soccer team — Carli Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, and Hope Solo — filed a federal complaint on behalf of the entire team charging that they’re ...

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